The gallows tree, p.5
The Gallows Tree, page 5
part #5 of Breed Series
When the fire was burning again he tickled out another fish and set it to cook over the flames before washing. He shaved in the cold water, wishing that his parentage might have left him as hairless as most Indians, then saddled the black horse and settled down to breakfast.
Eating like this was a luxury, and he knew that he should be pushing directly on, up into the Sierra Mogollon. But the temptation to enjoy the pleasures of his boyhood was too great: it had been a long time since he lived off the land of Apacheria. Too long. While he had the chance, he would make the most of it, take the rich bounty the land offered and hope to enjoy it again.
He kicked the fire dead when he was finished and climbed onto the horse. The sun was coloring the higher peaks of the mountain with a golden light as he rode away from the little meadow, and across the plain he could see bright yellow dusting over the flatlands. He checked the guns on his waist and saddle and turned the horse to the mountain.
The trail up was steep and narrow, winding through tall clefts and past wide falls of broken shale. Pinon trees dotted the cliffsides and mesquite covered the wider faces of the rock where sand and soil had gathered in sufficient quantity to afford the hardy plants a footing. Higher up there were pines and creosote bushes, patches of dogwood and wild cherry. Higher still, though he could not see them yet, there would be the mountain meadows, rich with grass. Stands of wild corn and the bright, yellow and red mountain flowers. Higher still, and westwards, would be the old rancheria, the place where he had buried his parents.
Azul—Matthew Gunn—rode on upwards, like a man riding back into a dream of the past.
He reached the old rancheria on the second day.
The sun was fading away behind the edge of the sky, throwing long shadows over the ground. Shadows that reached down into his soul.
There wasn’t very much left of the village, apart from a few splintered poles and tattered memories of rawhide wickiups. Dark patches on the hard ground where the cookfires and the council fires had been built.
There was a larger area of blackened ground at the center of the place, as though a huge bonfire had been built there. The ground beneath was ashy, burned so brittle dry that nothing would ever grow there again. Within the blackened area, and around it, were bones. A bleached skull, ribs chewed by coyotes, a femur nibbled by foxes, a sun-bleached pelvis, fragments of a hand.
Azul stared at the funeral wasteland, remembering when he had built the pyre for his people, when he had started his long and lonely hunt.
He walked across to the small cairn of stones built off to the side.
Something—probably a coyote or a fox—had displaced several of the stones as it attempted to burrow down to the bodies beneath. Azul scooped the soil back with his hands, packed it firmly down with his feet, then replaced the stones.
His parents lay there. Kieron Gunn and his wife, Rainbow Hair. White man and Indian woman, his parents. Proof that white and Indian could live together. Proof that white would never forgive them. He lowered his body to the ground, crossing his legs as he stared at the lonely grave. The white part of him wanted to cry, to shed tears for the memory of his loss; the Apache part stopped him. An Apache had no time for tears, they were a waste. An Apache nursed his deep grief inside him, hiding it until it might be vented on the ones who caused it. Nolan and Christie! Soon. Soon, he promised himself. He had hunted them across the great Southwest. Soon he must find them. Maybe with the help of Lieutenant Simms. But soon.
He sat, rocking slowly backwards and forwards, until the sun went all the way down and the moon came up and bathed the stones in pale, cold light. Somewhere off in the hills a wolf howled, as though offering a requiem. The black horse snorted nervously at the sound, shifting about so that scattered bones crunched under its hooves.
Then Azul heard the softer pad of moccasins. Knew that the visitor had let himself be heard.
‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘Who disturbs my grief?’
‘I share it,’ answered a remembered voice, ‘as a brother. Have you forgotten Lobo Loco?’
Chapter Six
AZUL LIFTED TO his feet in a single lithe movement, turning to face this new ghost.
Moonlight shone clear on the face of Lobo Loco, pooling shadow beneath the deep-set pits of his eyes, about the hook of his nose. Azul stared, recognizing the face by the general outline of its features as one might recognize an old building badly weathered and hidden beneath creeper.
‘I see you, Lobo Loco,’ he said quietly, hiding the emotion he felt, ‘and it is good.’
‘I see you, Azul who is also Matthew. And you are a liar. There is little good to see in my face.’
Azul remained silent: his old friend spoke the truth. The handsome, laughing youth was long gone into the mists of the past and in his place was a twisted man with a mask-like face. Lobo Loco’s hair was still black, but now a streak of pure white showed in the moonlight, starting at the front of his scalp and running clear through to his back. His nose had been broken and had set crooked, so that it twisted sideways on his cheek. One nostril was etched with a vee-shaped cut that ran on to the corner of his mouth, puckering the lips into a warped semblance of a smile. A second scar ran down his face from the hairline to the jaw. It crossed the socket of his left eye, drawing the skin of his cheekbone taut so that the lower lid of the eye was dragged down. The eyeball itself was a sightless, milky white. A blanket was thrown across the broad shoulders, but under it Azul could make out a tanned chest bisected with the track lines of old scars. Lobo Loco carried a Winchester carbine in the crook of his left arm. Where the hand cupped the stock, Azul could see that three fingers were missing. The Apache wore fringed buckskin pants, tucked—like Azul’s—into knee-high moccasins. The left leg was twisted round, the foot angling inwards.
‘Yes,’ said Lobo Loco, his good eye glinting, ‘I have changed. There is little good to look upon.’
‘You wear the marks of a warrior, and a warrior is not necessarily beautiful,’ said Azul slowly. ‘The good lies deeper. It is inside you, where the Great Spirit sees it. It is in my mind when I see an old friend I had thought was dead.’
‘Hair Lobo Loco chuckled. His slitted nose made a sibilant whistling sound. ‘Your tongue was always silver. Did you tell the story well?’
‘At the next naming,’ said Azul, ‘there were three young men who chose your name because of what I told. The shaman said they must wait because they were not then worthy to ask for so mighty a name.’
Lobo Loco chuckled again. ‘Much has changed since that day. You have grown older. You look like your father. He was a good man, Kieron Gunn. I share your grief as though it were mine.’
‘It belongs to us both,’ said Azul. ‘I gave your own parents the honor they deserved.’
‘I know,’ came the answer. ‘The Chiricahua talk of the one the pinda-lick-oyi call Breed, and of how he seeks the killers of the rancheria.’
‘You know?’ Azul was surprised.
‘They tell the story in the mountains. And the ears of Lobo Loco are keen and far-hearing, his eyes see wider, farther than the best of the two-eyed men.’
‘Farther than mine,’ prompted Azul, ‘for I thought that Lobo Loco was dead and gone into the Spirit World.’
‘I will tell you that story.’ The scarred man motioned for Azul to seat himself. ‘It will explain to you things you cannot yet understand.’
Azul sank down to a comfortable squatting position. Lobo Loco faced him, shoving his twisted leg out before him, then pulling it back to an easier position.
‘After you left me,’ he began, ‘I waited for the Mexicanos to come. I killed six of them as they attacked, and through the night we fired at one another until all my bullets were gone. I crawled out to the dead ones and took their bullets. In the morning they came at me from the front and from above,’
‘I know,’ said Azul, ‘I saw that. I fired a shot, trying to warn you. But they came down on you and I thought you were dead.’
‘I thank you for that,’ said Lobo Loco. ‘You should have sought your own safety: that was the action of a friend.
‘There were too many of them, anyway. When they came down the rocks, I shot one and cut another. He died later with the black-flesh disease. It hurt him, which is good. They fell on me, though, and one smashed my face with the stock of his rifle.’
He touched his broken nose and smiled. It was an ugly smile.
‘They should have killed me then, but the Federale captain wanted to show off his skill in taking an Apache alive. They bound me and tied me on a horse. It was very painful, but I made up my mind to stay alive and kill some Mexicanos if I could.
‘When they camped that night they played with me a bit. They cut my face up and used their knives on my body. The capitan stopped them after a while because he was afraid I would die. He was a stupid man. He made them bind my wounds, even my leg. They weren’t very good, but I suppose it stopped me bleeding away and I was grateful for the chance to kill some of them.
‘We reached Casas Grandes the next day and the capitan made a big thing out of taking me. I thought he was being foolish, because he should have killed me and gone after you and the others, but the Mexicanos are like that. Anyway, he put me in their jail and called a doctor to look at my wounds. I was very lucky, because I didn’t get the black-flesh disease and when the doctor bound up my leg I could stand. It hurt a lot, but I could still walk.
‘The next morning they took me out in front of the jail. They had built a horca, a gallows, out there, and they called me carne de la horca. I thought I was going to die then, so I kicked one of the men holding me up and tried to run away. My leg bent and I fell down, so they caught me again. But the man I kicked won’t make children any more. That was why they did what they did.’
Lobo Loco fell silent for a moment. His disfigured face turned down, hanging over his chest, and a long, slow shudder passed through him.
‘The horca was built like a frame for stretching skin: two poles in the ground with another tied across them. After the doctor had looked at the man I kicked, they said they would do the same to me. They tied my wrists to the high pole and stretched my legs out until they touched the upright poles. It hurt a lot, but I didn’t cry out. I wasn’t going to let them know it hurt so much.
‘There were a woman and children all around, laughing at me, and I could hear the men shouting for the Federales to get on with it and let me know what happened to an Apache. The capitan came forward and kicked me very hard between the legs. Then he called for his men and they all kicked me, too. One kick each. I broke three teeth instead of crying out, but after a while it didn’t hurt because I forgot what was happening.
‘Everything went away and I thought that I was going along the Star Road to the Spirit World. Until I felt the knife. The capitan came back with one of those big knives they call bayonetas.
‘He stripped me and reached down like a maricón between my legs. Then he cut me like a pig and threw my cojones to the people there.
‘When I woke up again I was back in the jail. They fed me and told me I was to be hung when the big fiesta came around, so that everyone could see what happened to Apaches who raided in Chihuahua. I waited until I was stronger, then I caught the jailer through the bars and strangled him. He was very careless. I took his knife and killed the man outside. There was a vaquero standing by the jail and when I stuck the knife in his back he turned around and cut me in my eye. But I killed him and took his horse.
‘I rode up towards the mountains and some Yaquis found me. They thought I was dying, but I told them I would kill anyone who tried to harm me, so they left me alone.
‘They looked after me until I was healed up. Their shamans are very bad, they can’t heal like the Apache, but they did look after me. I learned to walk with my leg bent round and after a while I got used to seeing out of one eye.
‘When I was able to ride again we went down to Casas Grandes. I found the Federate capitan and tied a rope on his feet. We took him out to the desert and I dragged him around until he was dead. That was good: he screamed all the time.
‘After that, I lived with the Yaquis for a few years. Then I came back. There was a lot changed—more forts, more pinda-lick-oyi; towns everywhere. The Federales chased me up into New Mexico, but I lost them. I suppose they talked with the blue-coat soldiers, because they’ve been hunting me ever since.’
‘I talked with them,’ said Azul. ‘They hunt you because of your raids. They say they have to stop you because you command a war band of bronco Apache.’
Lobo Loco threw back his head and laughed. It was an eerie, hollow sound. Way off across the hills the wolf Azul had heard earlier answered the cry.
‘Thirty warriors follow me,’ said Lobo Loco. ‘They follow me because they believe as I do, and because they know I am the best war leader. They know that the pinda-lick-oyi will lie and cheat, bring in the blue-coats with their guns. They know the white men will promise the Apache land and freedom, then take it all away; and when the Apache argues, the soldiers come to kill us. That is why we fight.’
‘You can never win,’ said Azul slowly. ‘There are too many white men. I have seen them. From here to where the land stops and the big water begins, there are white men. They cannot fight as well as the Apache, but they don’t need to. They have trains and the talking wire, the telegraph, so that they know what each band is doing and can send men faster than the swiftest horse to where the trouble is. They have cannons and guns that fire faster than a warrior might loose his arrows.’
‘Does that matter?’ asked Lobo Loco. ‘They want to take away our land like the Mexicanos took away my manhood. They would hold the Apache on their reservations and starve him to death. Is that better?’
‘But the blue-coat officer I spoke with told me the Apache lived free in the hills,’ said Azul. ‘That the pinda-lick-oyi gave him beef and flour and salt while he stayed in the hills. Surely that must be better than fighting the long-tongue cannons?’
Lobo Loco spat. ‘Does an Apache skulk like a whipped dog because the white man tells him to stay where he is? We won this land. The whites have no right to take it from us.’
‘But they will,’ muttered Azul sadly, ‘there is no stopping them. They have weapons the Apache cannot fight against, and there are so many of them. I have seen them: like the sands of the desert. Where one is killed three more spring up, to stop them is like trying to halt a sandstorm with your hands.’
‘You have chosen a different path to me, Azul,’ said Lobo Loco. ‘I know that you are not a coward, but you have chosen to follow the white man’s way. That is not the Apache way.’
‘No,’ answered the half-breed, ‘it is not. The Apache way would see the rancherias destroyed, the women weeping for their men. And all the while, the pinda-lick-oyi would move on, eating up more and more of the Apache land. I say it is better to find a way to live with them than to die like some old buffalo too stubborn to give in and eat the grass that is offered him.’
‘So we should bow our heads and let the white man stamp our faces down into the ground,’ said Lobo Loco. ‘Is that your way, Azul?’
‘No! It is not!’ The uselessness of the argument came home to Azul. He realized that the finest of the warriors would never accept the restrictions of the white government, that to do so would mean an end to the Apache way of life. At the same time he knew that there was no other way; at least not if the tribes were to stay alive. Capitulation must, inevitably, result in the break-up of the old ways; to fight must, with an equal inevitability, result in the annihilation of the people.
‘No,’ he said again. ‘It is not my way, but it is the only way. We must learn to live with the white man. Learn to adopt his ways, so that we can use them and become strong again.’
‘Hai! The friend of my youth has eaten the white man’s butter,’ grunted Lobo Loco. ‘It has greased his tongue and made it soft with words. I will tell him why I fight and perhaps he will understand, if the butter has not softened his heart.’
Azul stayed silent, ignoring the insult.
‘I am owed a debt,’ snarled Lobo. ‘One that will take much paying. I was a warrior favored by the women. I owned three horses, a rifle, and whatever my father might have left me. The raid on Casas Grandes took all that away. It twisted my leg and made my face something no woman will look upon. It left me useless for the women. And the white men say we must not go down into Mexico. Why should I not pay off that debt? The Mexicanos owe me that, surely? Yet the blue-coat soldiers punish those who follow the true path. We must stay in the hills and grow corn. We must not take the cattle that cross our land. We must not raid the Mexican towns.
‘We must sit and twiddle our thumbs like old men, talking about the good old days when we rode where we wanted. Is that fitting for the Apache?’
‘Ways change like the trails through the mountains,’ said Azul. ‘If a slide of rock blocks the path a sensible man rides around it, seeking a new trail.’
‘But if he starves?’ Lobo Loco asked. ‘What then? If the fall that closes his way leaves him too weak to climb the higher ways in search of the new path, what should he do? He knows the old trail lies there and he knows his belly aches with hunger too deep to climb a cliff. Then he fights to find the old way.’
‘And are you hungry?’ Azul demanded. ‘The white men send beef into the mountains.’
Lobo Loco snorted his disgust.
‘Each month the fat man from the town called Two Bits sends fifty cows into the mountains. The cows are old and sick, because he sells the others to white people. He gives the rancherias a few sacks of flour that has gone too moldy to sell to pinda-lick-oyi. He gives out a little salt. Sometimes he gives sugar and coffee. Then he tells the Apache how kind he is. The people starve, Azul! ‘
‘Is that why you took the white man’s cattle?’ asked the half-breed.
